January 4, 2012 | Barb Carr

Root Cause Analysis Tip: "Procedures" Best Practices Are Good For Everything You Write

In our 2-Day TapRooT® Incident Investigation and Root Cause Analysis Course, we introduce you to the Basic Cause Category “Procedures.” In our 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training,  we teach how to write a good procedure. The question is, “how many of you have used the best practices listed under Procedures to write training lessons, policies ……?”

Knowing that policies guide what “how to’s” and “do what’s” need to be created, trained and used, why do they have to be so convoluted and difficult to read? Not to pick on lawyers, but have ever tried to understand a legal document? Aren’t legal documents supposed to keep you out of trouble and not get you in trouble?

Interestingly enough, we even pass policies on policies found in this article.

“On October 13, 2010, President Obama signed into law the “United States Plain Writing Act of 2010.” Thirteen years after President Clinton issued his own “Plain Writing in Government” memorandum, the revised set of guidelines states that by July of this year all government agencies must simplify the often perplexing bureaucratic jargon used in documents produced for the American public. Gone are the grammatically longwinded sentences, replaced with simpler English words, grammar and syntax”

Take this excerpt from a policy; what missing best practices can you identify from the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree?

“The amount of expenses reimbursed to a claimant under this subpart shall be reduced by any amount that the claimant receives from a collateral source in connection with the same act of international terrorism. In cases in which a claimant receives reimbursement under this subpart for expenses that also will or may be reimbursed from another source, the claimant shall subrogate the United States to the claim for payment from the collateral source up to the amount for which the claimant was reimbursed under this subpart.”

Using the Basic Cause Category “Procedures,” I look forward to your missing best practices in the comments section.

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